In my experience, most DVDs made by digitizing analog tape sources just take the full 720x576 ITU frame and write it to the DVD, ignoring the difference between the ITU and MPEG 2 specs. If you have such a DVD you can fix it yourself by cropping, resizing, and/or forcing the SAR.

So AVS2DVD and ffmpeg are using the correct SAR as specified by the MPEG 2 spec. That is at odds with the ITU spec for digitizing analog 16:9 SD video where the SAR is approximated as 16:11 (assumes a 704x576 frame), or 512:351 (assumes a 702x576 frame - more accurate). So the MPEG 2 spec indicates (indirectly) the SAR (sample aspect ratio) for a 720x576 16:9 frame is 64:45. And it clearly states that the entire frame constitutes the DAR, not a 704x480 or 702x576 portion thereof. MPEG 2 video doesn't indicate the sampling aspect ratio directly, it indicates only the display aspect ratio. Only two of the four MPEG 2 aspect ratios are valid for DVD: 4:3 and 16:9 (the other two are 2.25:1 DAR and 1:1 SAR). But someone who did once posted here and said that the DVD spec refers to the MPEG 2 spec for aspect ratio information. The 'NLE' values do not conform to the SD video stanadrds desctibed in REC.470 and 601, also proper NLEs use proper values, such as Vegas Pro, somehow it is able to use proper Pixel Aspect Ratio, unfortunately ffmpeg can't.Īlso, if you dig deep enough, the ITU-R documents use the term Sample, not Pixel.

Yes, the video on DVD is 720x576 ans yes pixels are not square, but their width/height ratio is not 64:45.īeside, your comment does not answer my question. Would you like a long, or a short story why? The table on wikipedia is wrong, because it was made by morons who has no idea how SD video works and 64:45 is not correct. So maybe you mean Pixel Aspect Ratio and the table quoted confirms that 64:45 is correct for 16:9 PAL.įfmpeg uses the term SAR - Sample Aspect Ratio for the Pixel Aspect Ratio, not Storage Aspect Ratio.

There is no such thing as 'Sample Aspect Ratio' SAR stands for Storage Aspect Ratio which is almost always 720*576 for PAL DVD.

Ffmpeg crop values must be